"I'm not a real draggy person," the actor told The Times during a recent video interview. "I love 'RuPaul's Drag [Race].' I watch it a ton, but I watch it like, 'I can't imagine how you would do it.'"

Harris will soon get his chance: Producers announced in June that the four-time Tony host will return to Broadway in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," John Cameron Mitchell's tale of a transgender glam-rocker.

"It's beyond drag," said Harris, who's been playing the manly Barney Stinson on "How I Met Your Mother" for almost a decade. “You have to be so comfortable in your skin as Hedwig, and I have no idea how to accomplish that yet.

The University of Illinois' rescinded job offer to a professor and a controversy over a faculty blog at Chicago State University helped land the two schools on a 2014 "worst of" list for student and faculty free speech rights.